The Wagnerian Romances Part 6

Long and mournfully Wotan gazes upon the fallen Siegmund--best-beloved perhaps of all the Wagner heroes. Taking account suddenly of the presence of Hunding, "Begone, slave!" he orders, "kneel before Fricka, inform her that Wotan's spear has taken vengeance of that which brought mockery upon her!... Begone!... Begone!..." But at the gesture with which the command is emphasised, Hunding drops dead, crushed out of life by the G.o.d's contempt.

Abruptly recalled to the thought of his child's contumacy, Wotan starts up in terrific wrath: "But Brunnhilde! Woe to that offender!

Dreadful shall be the punishment meted to her audacity, when my horse overtakes her in her flight!" Amid lightning and thunder, aptly symbolising the state of his temper, the G.o.d vanishes from sight.

III

The third act shows the scene, a high rocky peak rising from among great pine-trees, where the Valkyries a.s.semble for their return together to the hall of Wotan. On the clouds they come riding, each with a dead warrior laid across her steed. Over the neighing and hoof-beats, the music develops of a lightly thundering cavalry-charge, suggestive of the rocking in the saddle of hors.e.m.e.n borne over billowing expanses--glorious with the glory of the hosts which fancy sees among the crimson and gold banners of the sunset. The eight are at last arrived; their war-cries, their hard laughter, and the shrill neighing of the battle-steeds mingle in harsh harmony.

The shrieks of an autumn gale, exulting in its freedom to drive the waves mountain-high and scatter all the leaves of the forest, have the same quality of wildness and force and glee. The steel-corseleted figures cl.u.s.tered on the peak make one think a little of gleaming dragon-flies seen in summer, swarming as they do around some point of mysterious interest. The laughter of the Valkyries is for grim jests they exchange over the conduct of their horses, who fall to fighting with one another, because the dead warriors on their backs were enemies in life. Brunnhilde only is wanting, to complete their number, but they dare not start for Walhalla without her, lest Walvater, not seeing his favourite, should receive them with a frown. They are amazed, when they finally see her coming, to descry on the back of her horse no warrior, but a woman--amazed, likewise, at the wild speed of Grane's flight, and to see him stagger and drop on reaching the goal. They hurry to Brunnhilde's a.s.sistance. She comes in, breathless with terror and haste, supporting Sieglinde. Wotan, she informs the wondering sisters, is hot in pursuit of her. She begs one of them to keep lookout for him from the top of the peak. The black storm-cloud on which he rides is perceived sweeping toward them from the north.

To the questioning Valkyries Brunnhilde gives in quick outline the story of her disobedience, and implores their help to save Sieglinde,--for the Walsungen all Wotan has threatened with destruction.

She conjures them, too, to conceal herself, who has not the hardihood to face her father in the extremity of his indignation. But the sisters are appalled at the revelation of her misdeed, and no less at the suggestion that they should join in her act of rebellion.

Her prayer for the loan of one of their horses on which the woman may escape, meets with obtuse looks, headshakes, uncompromising denial. She is appealing urgently, hurriedly, to one after the other, when Sieglinde who, stony, death-struck, dazed with grief, has appeared unconscious, up to this moment, of all taking place around her, stops her, stating dully that there is no need to trouble about her, since her only wish is to die. She indeed reproaches Brunnhilde for her care, and bids her now, if she is not to curse her for their flight, to end her life by a thrust of the sword. In the next moment the face of this same woman sheds the very radiance of joy: the Valkyrie has revealed to her that of her a Walsung shall be born. Then, oh, "Save me, you valiant one!" she cries. "Save my child! Protect me, you maidens, with your mightiest protection!

Save me! Save the mother!" She kneels to them. The cool-blooded spinsters are moved by this, but not to the point of braving Wotan's ire. "Then fly in haste, and fly alone!" Brunnhilde with sudden resolve bids Sieglinde: "I will remain behind and draw upon me, delaying him, Wotan's anger." "In what direction shall I go?" asks the woman eagerly. Eastward, one of the sisters tells her, lies a forest. Fafner there, in the shape of a dragon, guards the treasure of the Nibelungen. An unsuitable place for a helpless woman, yet one where she will be safe from Wotan, for the G.o.d, it has been observed, shuns it. "Away then to eastward," Brunnhilde instructs Sieglinde; "with undaunted courage bear every trial. Hunger and thirst, thorns and stony roads--do you laugh at want and sorrow, for one thing know, and keep it ever in mind: the most exalted hero in the world, O woman, shall be born of you!" A great melodious phrase describes him, the future Siegfried, as if with one magnificent stroke outlining a form of heroic beauty and valour. Brunnhilde gives Sieglinde the pieces of Siegmund's sword, gathered up from the field after the ill-fated encounter. "He who one day shall swing this sword newly welded together, let him take his name from me: As Siegfried let him rejoice in victory!" From the soul of Sieglinde rises a soaring song of grat.i.tude and praise, a song of purest, highest joy. Her last words to Brunnhilde, as clasping to her breast the broken sword she hastens away, are, interpreted: "My grat.i.tude shall one day reward you, smiling at you in human form!... Farewell! Sieglinde in her woe calls down blessings upon you!"

The storm-cloud has reached the rock, Wotan's voice is heard: "Brunnhilde, stand!" At the sound of it, Brunnhilde's heart fails her; the hearts of the sisters, too, soften. Crowding together on the rocky peak, they let the culprit cower out of sight among them.

But Wotan is not deceived; he addresses to the hidden daughter such sharp and searching reproaches that, her fear for herself losing all importance as these strike her heart, she steps forth from among the sister-Valkyries and meekly stands before her father, awaiting condemnation.

"Not I," he speaks, "punish you. Yourself you have framed your punishment!" And he exposes how by forgetting the whole duty of a Valkyrie--to deal victory or defeat according to Wotan's decree--she had made herself in effect no longer a Valkyrie. "No more shall I send you from Walhalla.... No longer shall you bring warriors to my hall.... From the tribe of the G.o.ds you are cut off, rejected from the eternal line.... Our tie is severed.... You are banished from my face!" The sisters break into lamentation. "Upon this mountain I banish you. In undefended sleep I shall seal you. Let the man then capture the maid who finds her upon his road and wakes her."

The sisters endeavour to restrain him, pointing out that their own honour will suffer from such a scandal. He rejects this on the ground that they have nothing more whatever to do with the faithless sister. "A husband is to win her feminine favor; masterful man is henceforth to have her duty. By the fireside she shall sit and spin, an object of scorn to all beholders!" Brunnhilde drops at his feet, overwhelmed. Cries of horror and protest break from the others; he drives them from his presence with the threat of a similar fate to Brunnhilde's if they do not forthwith depart from her, and keep afar from the rock where she suffers her sentence.

In a confusion of terror, which is not without the slightest point of humour, the strong girls flee like leaves in the blast before Wotan's menace,--and Brunnhilde is left alone to plead her poor cause with the stern incensed father.

She conjures him first to silence his anger, and define to her the dark fault which has impelled him to reject the most loyal of his children. "I carried out your order," she protests. "Did I order you to fight for the Walsung?" he inquires. "You did,"

she reminds him. "But I took back my instructions." "When Fricka had estranged you from your own mind.... Not wise am I, but this one thing I knew, that the Walsung was dear to you. I was aware of the conflict which compelled you to turn from the remembrance of this.... I kept in sight for you that which, painfully divided in feeling, you must turn your back upon. Thus it was that I saw what you could not see. I saw Siegmund. I stood before him announcing death. I met his eye, I heard his voice, I apprehended the hero's ineffable distress.... I witnessed that which struck the heart in my bosom with awe and trembling. Timid and wondering I stood before him, in shame. I could think only how I might serve him....

And confidently counting upon an intimate understanding of him who had bred that love in my heart,--of that will which had attached me to the Walsung,--I disobeyed your command!"

Wotan, in meeting this, shows how he is not merely a father dealing with a disobedient child, but a man in strife with himself, with his own will which has betrayed him into following affection, inclination, when duty called for an opposite course. "If thy right hand offend thee, cut if off and cast it from thee." Brunnhilde is to Wotan that offending flesh and blood, and the safety of the future depends, it seems, upon his breaking his own heart by cutting her off from himself. She has done what his heart would have had him do; but for interests whose claim upon him is in his estimation greater than that of affection (_einer Welt zu Liebe_: for the sake of a world), he had elected not to follow his heart's impulse. And this delinquent, daughter at once and his own will, must not only be punished for the example of all the disobedient, but cut off from himself, to provide absolutely against any possible repet.i.tion of the so lovable and forgivable offence.

Brunnhilde, when she has heard him out, has no word further of argument or defence, but acquiesces with sad submissiveness. "Certainly the foolish maiden is no fit helpmate for you, who, confused by your amazing counsel, did not understand your mind, when her own mind prompted one thing only: to love that which you loved!" She accepts the punishment as just, only: "If you are to sever that which was bound together," she pleads, "to keep apart from yourself the very half of yourself, that I was once completely one with you, O G.o.d, forget it not! Your immortal part you cannot wish to dishonour. You cannot intend an ignominy which involves you....

Yourself you would be degraded, if you gave me over to insult!"

"You followed, light of heart, the call of love," Wotan replies unconcedingly: "follow now him whom you must love!" "If I must depart from Walhalla, if I am to be your companion and servant no more," Brunnhilde pressingly continues, "if my obedience is to be given to masterful man, not of a coward and braggart let me be the prize! Let him not be worthless who shall win me!" "You cut yourself off from Walvater," he repulses her; "he cannot choose for you!" "A n.o.ble generation there is, having its origin in you--"

Brunnhilde suggests, still unquelled, the point is so vital to her; "the most admirable of heroes, I know it, is to spring from the line of the Walsungen...." "Not a word of the Walsungen!" Wotan fiercely interrupts. "When I severed from you, I severed from them.

Doomed to destruction is that line!" Sieglinde has been saved, Brunnhilde informs him, who shall give birth to the Walsung of whom she speaks. Wotan sternly silences her: let her not seek to shake his firmness. He cannot choose for her! He has loitered too long already. He cannot stop to consider what her wishes are, nothing further has he to do with her but to see his sentence executed.

What has he devised for her punishment, she asks.

He repeats his earlier sentence: "In deep sleep I shall seal you.

He who awakes the defenceless sleeper, shall have her to wife."

Brunnhilde falls on her knees to him. "If I am to be bound in fast sleep, an easy prey to the most ign.o.ble of men, this one prayer you shall grant which a n.o.ble terror lifts to you: Let the sleeper be protected by a barrier of fright-inspiring things, that only a fearless and great-hearted hero may be able to reach me on my mountain-peak!" "Too much you demand! Too much of favour!" She clasps his knees, and with the wildest inspiration of terror: "This one prayer you must--must listen to! At your command let a great fire spring up. Let the summit be surrounded by fierce flames, whose tongues shall lick up and whose teeth shall devour any caitiff venturing near to the formidable place!" So is her whole soul heard to cry aloud in this prayer, as she pleads for so much more than her life, that all by which Wotan had fortified himself against her, and which had been subjected to an a.s.sault so prolonged, suddenly gives way, his weary heart is pierced. Overcome by emotion, he lifts her to her feet; he gazes long into her eyes, reading her soul there,--then amply, fully, with the whole of his overflowing heart, grants her prayer: "Farewell, O dauntless, glorious child!

Holy pride of my heart, farewell! Farewell! Farewell! If I must shun you, if I am never more fondly to greet you, if you are no more to ride at my side, or reach me the cup of mead; if I am to lose you whom I so have loved, O laughing joy of my eyes--a bridal bonfire shall blaze for you such as never yet blazed for a bride! A flaming barrier shall girdle the rock; with burning terror-signals it shall frighten away the coward. The fainthearted shall keep afar from Brunnhilde's rock. That one alone shall win the bride, who is freer than I--the G.o.d!" In a speechless ecstasy of grat.i.tude, Brunnhilde sinks on his breast, and he holds her long silently clasped, while there floats heavenward as if the very voice of their relieved, pacified, uplifted hearts. Supporting her in his arms, gazing tenderly in her upturned face, he takes his last leave of her. There is a pa.s.sage in Wotan's farewell which seems to contain, compressed into it, all the yearning ache of all farewells, with all the sweetness of the love which makes parting bitter. "For the last time.... Farewell.... The last kiss...." These words occur upon it. The motif it seems of the tragedy of last times; one wonders could custom ever so harden him to it that he should feel no clutch at the heart in hearing it. "For the last time I appease myself with the last kiss of farewell.... Upon a happier mortal the star of your eye shall beam. Upon the unhappy Immortal it must, in parting, close. For thus does the G.o.d turn away from you, thus does he kiss away your divinity!" He presses a long kiss upon each of her eyes, and the first languor of sleep falling at once upon her, she leans, without strength, against him. He supports her to a mossy knoll beneath a spreading pine-tree, and lays her gently upon it; after a long brooding look at her face, closes her helmet; after a long look at her sleeping form, covers it with the great Valkyrie s.h.i.+eld; places her spear beside her, and with a last long sad look at the slumbering motionless figure, turns away,--having effectually desolated himself of the three dearest of his children.

Resolutely striding from the sleeper, he summons Loge, and commands him in his original form of elemental fire to surround the mountain-summit. At the shock of his spear against the rock, a flame flashes and rapidly spreads. With his spear Wotan traces the course the fire is to follow, girdling the peak. Nimbly it leaps from point to point, till the whole background is fringed with flame. At Wotan's words, "Let no one who is afraid of my spear ever break through the fiery barrier!" there falls, prophetic, across the dream of Brunnhilde's charmed sleep, the great shadow of the Deliverer, so distant yet in time, Siegfried, who when the hour came of test was found to fear Wotan's spear as little as he feared anything else.

With that firm spell placed upon his magnificent and adequate fence, Wotan departs; and, guarded by the singing flames, which weave into the rhythm of their bright dance the tenderest of lullabies, Brunnhilde is left to her long rest.

SIEGFRIED

SIEGFRIED

I

Fafner, when he had become possessor of the Nibelungen treasure, conveyed it, as we have seen, to a cave in a lonesome forest, and there in the shape of a dragon mounted guard over it. Mime, the dwarf, in order to keep the same treasure under some sort of oversight, took up his abode in the forest, at a respectful distance from the flame-breathing monster. Alberich haunted the immediate neighbourhood of the cave.

Thus it happened that Sieglinde, directed by the Valkyries to that region, where she should be safest from Wotan's anger, was overheard by Mime, out in the lonesome wood, moaning in her trouble. He a.s.sisted her into his cave. There Siegfried was born, and there Sieglinde died. Mime reared the "Walsungen-shoot" with solicitous care, in the ulterior view that this scion of a strong race when grown to man's size should kill Fafner for him and get him the Ring.

At the rise of the curtain we see Mime at his anvil, struggling with a heavy difficulty. He is fas.h.i.+oning a sword for Siegfried,--still another sword, after ever so many,--realising even as he works that no sword he can forge but will break in the lad's strong hands.

"The best sword I ever forged, which in the hands of a giant would stand stiff, the insignificant stripling for whom it was shaped he whacks and snaps it in two, as if I had made him a child's plaything!" It is sober fact to Mime that he cannot use Siegfried for his purposes until he have equipped him with a sword. "A sword there is," he continues his meditation, "which he could not break.

The fragments of Nothung he never could shatter, could I weld the strong pieces together, which all my art cannot compa.s.s! Nothung alone could be of use,... and I cannot weld it, Nothung, the sword!"

Half-heartedly he has resumed his toil, when a joyous shout is heard from the forest, of which a sun-shot patch glimmers through the cave's mouth, and there storms in, driving before him a tethered bear, a magnificent youth, clad in skins, a silver horn at his side.

The splendour of Siegfried's appearance is constantly referred to, the qualifications applied to him suggesting most frequently an effect he shed of light. This child of the unhappy Walsungen seems to have been indelibly stamped with the joy of their one golden hour. Of Siegmund's tragic consciousness of frustration, of Sieglinde's sufferings, there is no trace in their vigorous offspring; but the superabundant vitality of joy which lifted them to the lovers' seventh heaven for one triumphant hour is all in his young blood. He is big, strong, sane, comely, fearless, simple, ignorant of all mean pa.s.sions and interests; pensive for moments, gay for hours-nearly boisterous; frank and outspoken to the point of brutality; unmannerly at times to the point of ruffianism; but the dice are loaded to secure our cheris.h.i.+ng him right through his bright course, by that irresistible, ingrain joyousness of his, born of strength, balance, fearlessness.

Laughing immoderately, he urges the bear against Mime, who flees. .h.i.ther and thither to elude the fearful pair. "I am come in double force, the better to corner you.... Brownie, ask for the sword!"

When a.s.sured by the trembling Mime that the sword is in readiness, he releases and sends home his s.h.a.ggy ally. But when Mime hands him the newly finished sword, and he strikes it on the anvil, it flies to bits. The angry boy expresses his wish that he had smashed the sword on the disgraceful bungler's skull. "Shall such a braggart go on bragging? He prates me of giants and l.u.s.ty fighting; of gallant deeds and solid armour; he will forge weapons for me, provide me with swords; he vaunts his art as if he could do something of account; but let me take hold of the thing he has hammered, with a single grip I crush flat the idle rubbis.h.!.+ If the creature were not so utterly mean, I would drop him into the forge-fire with all the stuff of his forging, the old imbecile hobgoblin! There might be an end then to vexation!" He casts himself fuming on a stone seat and turns his face toward the wall. The dwarf, who has kept his distance from the storming youth, tries to quiet him, reminds him of his benefits, of his teachings on the subject of grat.i.tude.

Ingratiatingly he brings him food. Siegfried without turning dashes spit and pipkin from his hands. The little man affects a deeply hurt sensibility. He rehea.r.s.es at length all Siegfried has to thank him for, material necessities, education,--"With clever counsel I made you clever, with subtle wisdom I taught you wit...." This tale of benefactions has been gone over so often that the dwarf has reached a fine glibness in it; the smooth air on which he enumerates the instances of his kindness has a peculiar cast of hypocrisy. He is so touched by the contemplation finally of his own goodness and Siegfried's hardness of heart that he falls to weeping. "And for all I have borne this is now the reward, that the hot-tempered boy torments and hates me!"

Siegfried has been calmly gazing into Mime's eyes; trying through these to get at the truth of him. Mime expresses surprise that after so many unquestionable services the boy should hate him; and the boy is not himself without a touch of wonder at the invincible antipathy with which this creature inspires him, to whom yet he is actually indebted for many good offices. "Much you have taught me, Mime, and many a thing have I learned of you; but that which you have most cared to teach me, never have I succeeded in learning: how I could bear the sight of you! If you bring me food and drink, disgust takes the place of dinner; if you spread an easy couch for me, sleep on it becomes difficult; if you endeavour to teach me wise conversation, I prefer to be dumb and dull. Whenever I set eyes on you, I recognise as ill-done everything you do; whether I watch you stand, or waggle and walk, ducking, nidnodding, blinking with your eyes, my impulse is to catch the nidnodder by the scruff of the neck, to hurl out of the way for good and all the odious blinker! That is my manner, Mime, of being fond of you. Now, if you are wise, help me to know a thing which I have vainly reflected upon: I run into the woods to be rid of you; how does it happen that I come back? All animals are dearer to me than you, trees and birds, the fish in the stream, I am fonder of them all than I am of you; then how does it happen that I still come back? If you are wise, make clear to me this thing!" "My child," replies Mime, "you are informed by that circ.u.mstance how near I lie to your heart!" "I tell you I cannot bear you! Forget it not so soon!"

Mime argues that such a thing is impossible, is out of nature; that what to the young bird is the old bird, which feeds it in the nest until it is fledged, that is to Siegfried, inevitably, Mime!

This simile of Mime's suggests to Siegfried a further question. In asking it he has one of those brief accesses of pensiveness which endear him, disclosing the existence of a common human tenderness, after all, under that st.u.r.dy wrapping of joy befitting the child of demiG.o.ds. "Now, since you are so wise, tell me still another thing: When the birds were singing so blithely in Spring, the one luring the other, you told me, as I wished to know, that they were male and female. They billed and cooed so engagingly, and would not leave each other; they built a nest and brooded in it; there was a fluttering presently of young wings, and the two cared for the young. I saw how, in the same way, the deer rested in the forest, in pairs; how even wild faxes and wolves did this. The male brought food to the lair, the female nursed the cubs. I learned from seeing this what love is--I never robbed the mother of her young...." The music has been heaving and falling, as if with the warm palpitation of a vast breast, Nature's own, blissful with love and happy creative force. "Now, where, Mime, is your loving mate, that I may call her mother?" Mime becomes cross: "What has come over you, mad boy?

Now, what a numbskull it is! Are you a bird or a fox?" And at Siegfried's next question he chafes: "You are to believe what I tell you: I am your father and mother at the same time!" But Siegfried vigorously objects: "There you lie, unspeakable gawk! How the young resemble their parents I have luckily observed for myself. More than once I have come to a clear stream: I have seen the trees and animals mirrored in it; the sun and clouds, exactly as they are, appear repeated on the s.h.i.+ning surface. My own image, too, I have seen. Altogether different from you I seemed to myself: there is as much likeness between a toad and a gleaming fish, but never yet did a fish crawl out of a toad!" This latter bit in its short extent gives an amusing, characteristic ill.u.s.tration of Wagner's method of painting with notes. With the first phrase, Siegfried's impatient exclamation, comes the motif of Siegfried's impetuosity; then, as he is describing it, a representation of the clear stream; upon this is sketched the image of Siegfried, in the notes of his proper motif, to which is added a bar of the heroism-of-the-Walsungen motif, indicating his resemblance to the father before him. At his mention of the toad, his metaphor for Mime, we hear the hammer of the Nibelung; and at his mention of the gleaming fish, the swimming phrase that accompanies the watery evolutions of the Rhine-maidens.

The ingeniousness of all this would not perhaps of itself especially recommend the piece, were it not that the scheme is worked out to such beautiful purpose that the whole thing is lovely, and that, though one should know nothing whatever of the motifs, his ear must be charmed.

Satisfied by his own logic that Mime cannot be his progenitor, Siegfried now himself answers his earlier question: "When I run into the woods in the thought of forsaking you, how does it happen that I still return home? It is because from you I am to learn who are my father and mother!" Mime evades him: "What father! What mother! Idle question!" But Siegfried catches him by the throat, and the terrified dwarf communicates, grudgingly, a scant fact or two of his history. "Oh, ungrateful and wicked child! now hear for what it is you hate me. I am neither your father nor any kin of yours, and yet to me you owe your life...." Making his own part in the story as meritorious as possible, he relates his taking into shelter the woman whom he had found moaning out in the wild woods. Siegfried, for once penetrated with sadness, wonder, and awe, breathes forth softly, when the sorrowful story is ended, "My mother--died then--of me?" He tries by questions to complete the dwarf's bare account: "Whence am I named Siegfried?" "Thus did your mother bid me call you." "What was my mother's name?"

Mime feigns to have forgotten, but, roughly pressed, recalls it.

"Then, I ask you, what was my father's name?" "Him I never saw!"

"But my mother spoke the name?" "She only said that he had been slain." Siegfried is smitten with the suspicion that Mime may be lying to him, and demands some proof of all this which he has heard.

Mime, after a moment's resistance, in terror of the boy's rising wrath, fetches from its hiding and shows him the pieces of a broken sword. "This was given me by your mother. For trouble, cost and care, she left it as paltry remuneration. Behold it! A broken sword!

Your father, she said, carried it in the last battle, when he was slain." Siegfried's strong good spirits have already returned.

"And these fragments," he cries, with enthusiasm, "you are to weld together for me. Then I shall swing my proper sword! Hurry, Mime!

Quick to work!... Cheat me not with trumpery toys! In these fragments alone I place my faith. If I find you idle, if you join them imperfectly, if there are flaws in the hard steel, you shall learn burnis.h.i.+ng from me! For this very day, I swear it, I mean to have the sword!" "What do you want this very day of the sword?" Mime inquires in alarm. Siegfried, his heart inexpressibly lightened by the positive knowledge that Mime is neither father nor any kin to him, bursts into merry singing: "To go away, out of the woods into the world. Never shall I come back!... As the fish gaily swims in the flood, as the finch freely flies afar, so shall I fly, so shall I dart... that I may never, Mime, see you more!" Off he storms into the forest, leaving Mime shouting after him, a prey to the utmost anxiety. The dwarf's difficulty is now twofold: "To the old care I have a new one added!" How to retain the wild fellow and guide him to Fafner's nest, and how to mend those pieces of stubborn steel. "No forge is there whose glow can soften the thorough-bred fragments. No dwarf's hammer can compel the hard pieces...." In unmitigated despair, void of counsel, he drops on his seat behind the anvil and weeps.

Ushered by great calm chords, measured and dignified as the gait of a G.o.d on his travels, a wayfarer appears at the entrance of the cave. He wears an ample deep-blue mantle, and for staff carries a spear. On his head is a broad hat, the brim of which dips so as to conceal one of his eyes. It is Wotan. Since parting from Brunnhilde he has had no heart for warfare, no heart to ride to battle without the "laughing joy of his eyes." Alone, unresting, he has wandered all over the wide earth in search of counsel and, very likely, distraction. A spectator he is in these days and not an actor. His spirit has reached a state of philosophic calm. He has learned better certainly than to meddle any more with anything that concerns the accursed Ring. He is brought into the neighbourhood of the still interested actors in that old drama in part by curiosity; in part, no doubt, by the wish to watch the actions of Siegfried, his beloved children's child. But in some faintest degree, at least, it would seem, he is brought here by the invincible need to influence these fortunes just a little, though it be firmly fixed that he is not to try directly or indirectly to divert the Ring into any channel which shall bring it eventually to himself. All else being equal, he had a little rather strengthen Mime's chances of getting the Ring, through Siegfried, than inactively see it fall to the inveterate enemy, Alberich.

At the greeting he speaks from the threshold to the "wise smith,"

Mime starts up in affright: "Who is it, pursuing me into the forest wilderness?" "Wanderer is the world's name for me. Far have I wandered, much have I bestirred myself on the back of the earth." "Then bestir yourself now! and do not loiter here, if Wanderer is the world's name for you!" Mime, with his head full of his dark little projects, has a deep dread of spies and interference. At every step the Wanderer takes further into his dwelling, he utters a sharper protest; and at every protest the Wanderer calmly advances a step further. "Through much research, much have I learned," speaks Wanderer, "I could impart to many a one things of importance to him; I could deliver many a one from that which troubles him--from the gnawing care of the heart." And after still another irritated dismissal from Mime: "Many a one has imagined himself to be wise, but the thing which he most needed to know, he knew not. I gave him leave to ask me what should help him, and enlightened him by my word." And after again being nervously shown the door: "Here I sit by the fireside,"

speaks blandly Wanderer, suiting the action to the word, "and I set my head as stake in a match of wits. My head is yours, you have won it, if you do not, by questioning me, succeed in learning what shall profit you; if I do not, by my instructions, redeem the pledge."

It is plain enough that if Mime would now expose to the Wanderer the source of the gnawing care at his heart, and ask him how Nothung might be welded, he would receive the information. Wotan is clearly eager to give it, yet cannot do so directly, or he would be too crudely meddling again in the Ring affair: he cannot press on him his counsel, but, at his old trick of ingenuous double-dealing, might by means of this guessing-game make s.h.i.+ft to convey it to him.

Mime, old and wise as he is, has yet in certain directions a dwarfed understanding; certainly not enough generosity to trust anybody, or conceive of a disinterested desire to do him a good turn. His whole concern now is how to be rid of this large tactless personage.

"I must question him in such a manner as to trap him," he says to himself. It is agreed that he shall have three questions. He sits brooding a moment, trying to find something very difficult indeed.

The motif of Mime's cogitations, which has already been frequently heard in this act, gives amusingly the unheroic colour of the sordid little mind's workings. He fixes upon questions concerning things which might be supposed little known to a wanderer of human descent, even such a much-travelled and conceited one. First: What race reigns in the depths of the earth? Second: What race rests upon the back of the earth? Third: What race dwells on the cloudy heights?

Wotan readily answers all these, giving bits of the histories of the races in question, the Nibelungen, the Giants, and the G.o.ds.

As he describes the spear of Wotan, whose lord all must eternally obey, he with an involuntary gesture of command brings his spear hard down on the stone floor. Faint thunder results. Terror falls upon Mime, who by the light s.h.i.+ning for a moment from his countenance, has recognised the G.o.d. "You have solved the questions and saved your head," he says hurriedly, without looking Wotan in the face. "Now, Wanderer, go your way!" But the Wanderer declares that according to custom in such contests, it is the dwarf's turn now to answer three questions or lose his head. "It is a long time," Mime ventures timidly, "since I left my native place; a long time since I departed from the bosom of earth, my mother; I once saw the gleam of Wotan's eye as he looked into the cave; my mother-wit dwindles before him...."

But the wee fellow has no mean conceit of his wisdom, and is really not as uneasy as might be expected of one in his position. "Perhaps I shall be so lucky," he suggests, not without complacency, "as, under this compulsion, to deliver the dwarf's head!" Wotan asks him, for the first question,--and the pain of the memories oppressing him is translated to us by the motif of parting, the motif of "last times," while the G.o.d's tones are infinitely tender--"What race is it to which Wotan shows himself stern, and which yet he loves the best of all living?" Glibly Mime answers, showing a full acquaintance with the circ.u.mstances, "The Walsungen." Wotan pa.s.ses on to the second question: "A wise Nibelung keeps watch over Siegfried. He is to kill Fafner for him, that he may get the Ring and become lord of the Hort. What sword now must Siegfried wield, if he is to deal death to Fafner?" Mime, delighted with himself, readily replies: "Nothung is the name of a notable sword.... The fragments of it are preserved by a wise smith, for he knows that with the Wotan-sword alone an intrepid stupid boy, Siegfried, shall destroy the dragon." He rubs his hands in goblin glee. "Am I, dwarf, in the second instance still to retain my head?" Wanderer, with a laugh for his antics, felicitates him: "The most keen-witted are you among the wise; who can equal you in acuteness? But seeing you are so cunning as to use the boyish hero for your dwarf-purposes, with the third question I now make bold: Tell me, wise armourer, who, out of the strong fragments, shall forge Nothung anew?"

Consternation falls upon the dwarf. Who, indeed? Was not that question the very hub around which turned all his troubled reflections? Had it not been that which was forcing tears from him at the moment of the Wanderer's arrival? He runs. .h.i.ther and thither distracted, in broken exclamations admitting that he himself cannot forge the sword, and how should he know who can perform the miracle? The Wanderer rises from his seat beside the hearth. "Three questions you were free to ask. Three times I was open to consultation. You inquired of things idle and remote, but that which was closest to you, that which might profit you, did not enter your mind. Now that I have guessed it, you lose your senses with fright. I have won the witty head. Now, brave conqueror of Fafner, hear, doomed dwarf: Only one who has never known fear can forge Nothung anew."

On his way to the mouth of the cave, he turns for another word to the chap-fallen Mime: "Look out for your wise head from this day forth: I leave it in forfeit to him who has never learned fear!"

With a laugh for the double-horned dilemma in which he leaves the "honest dwarf," he pa.s.ses forth into the woods.